Dialogue and Conversation

Dialogue is the tone you want your characters to have. It is the characters voice in a story. An exchange of dialogue between two or more characters is called a conversation.

To Show rather than Tell The characters become more real to the readers when the writer describes rather than just tells. To Build Tension and Drama Stories become a bore when there is no tension or drama. Reveal Character To Share how a character is, what he/she is doing, feeling etc. with the readers of the story. To Create White Space on a Page This technique mostly attracts busy readers

Give it Purpose – don’t just write dialogue because you just want to. Write a dialogue for a reason. Keep it Concise – means a writer should not beat around the bush. Make it Flow – construct dialogue in a way that the readers will not get bored reading it. Do not over use dialogue tags (he said, she said). Give it Distinction – no writer wants a character in their story to sound the same. Do not forget Quotation marks – this is a marker between words from the story and words from the character themselves. Punctuate Appropriately – Punctuation use helps readers understand how the characters are feeling at that specific moment.

Read other stories with dialogue. This helps the writer get an idea on how he/she will construct his/her own dialogue in their work. Listen to conversations. Try to catch the rhythm of natural speech and how different people use dialogue when conversing with one another. Read Aloud. When the writer reads what he/she has created aloud this helps them distinguish if the conversation sounds good or not.